City of San Luis Obispo Transit Map—Spring 2009

City of San Luis Obispo

The City of San Luis Obispo had relied on outside vendors to design its transit map each year until the need to reduce long-term costs brought the project in-house for the 2008–2009 budget year. The result wasn’t just a less expensive and more flexible process, it was a better map.

Providing excellent service includes keeping people informed when things change, so several kiosks displaying 4-by-5-foot prints of the map and schedule were installed throughout the city. As routes and timetables changed every few months, the design could be kept up-to-date on the Web site, on kiosks, and on buses.

City staff recognized the opportunity to create a map that communicates more than just transit routes and nearby points of interest. This decision meant preferring cartographic techniques to graphic abstractions and interpretations. The map needed more geography, not less.

By preserving spatial accuracy, existing feature layers such as buildings and topography could be easily incorporated into the design. Layers of information that would only clutter a more diagrammatic map serve instead to increase the reader’s spatial awareness of bus routes within San Luis Obispo and the nature of the city itself. The maps were printed on quality paper stock using a waterless offset-printing process in order to preserve the clarity of the design.

The public response has been overwhelmingly positive, inspiring other divisions to explore opportunities to use GIS to help increase the quality of important services while reducing the cost of providing them.

Courtesy of the City of San Luis Obispo.

Map Book Page [PDF]